THE aphorism “Common sense is not so common,” widely attributed to Voltaire, underscores a persistent paradox: practical reasoning and ostensibly obvious knowledge are far from universal. What seems self-evident to one person may elude another — not necessarily from a lack of intelligence, but because judgment is often clouded by emotion, shaped by divergent experience, or distorted by ego.
The line is a reminder that clarity and rationality are neither innate nor evenly distributed; they are cultivated traits, easily overridden by human fallibility.
I was reminded of this during the recent Senate debate over the South China Sea — or, as it is officially referred to in the Philippines, the “West Philippine Sea”.
Several senators anchored their arguments in appeals to national pride and historical grievance. Their language resonated with the Filipino spirit, but it operated almost entirely in the realm of sentiment. In contrast, Senator Rodante Marcoleta offered something far less romantic, but far more useful: an insistence on “metes and bounds” — the cold, mathematical coordinates that define territory. For a developing nation like the Philippines, choosing technical precision over emotional rhetoric is not merely a legal preference. It is a prerequisite for economic survival and geopolitical stability.
The primary danger of the “will to defend” approach, advocated by some senators, is what military strategists call an “infinite front.”
By refusing to define the exact limits of our claims, instead treating every rock and reef as the emotional equivalent of the mainland, the Philippines expands its theater of potential conflict to unmanageable proportions. When every minor encounter in the vast South China Sea is framed as an existential threat, the nation is held in a state of perpetual high tension. This instability has a direct, quantifiable cost for the average citizen.
For a fisherman family in Palawan, the cost is the loss of livelihood. When maritime boundaries remain a blurry fog of competing slogans, the sea becomes a lawless zone where might makes right. By establishing clear fences through legal mapping — as Marcoleta urges — the Philippines can create a predictable environment. Clear boundaries allow for de-confliction: protocols that let fishermen operate without becoming pawns in a superpower standoff. Without those lines, every fishing boat becomes a potential trigger for a war that the Philippines, realistically, cannot sustain alone.
The economic fallout is also felt in Manila, in the wallets of working families. The South China Sea is the artery of global trade; any credible threat of conflict drives up maritime insurance premiums and disrupts supply chains. This translates directly into inflation — the rising cost of fuel, rice, and electricity. Marcoleta’s focus on legal precision is an attempt to fence the risk — to ensure that the Philippines defends what it can legally prove and avoids being dragged into escalations that sabotage its own economy.
We need look no further than Vietnam and Malaysia for evidence that this logic works. Both nations have fierce territorial disputes with China, yet they have mastered the art of triadic diplomacy: they protest, but they also negotiate and trade. Malaysia, for instance, uses its 1979 map to define its continental shelf with surgical precision. While it occasionally faces maritime standoffs, it simultaneously maintains massive trade relations and engages in quiet negotiations with Beijing. It does not treat every dispute as a rupture. Instead, it uses legal fences to protect oil and gas projects — such as the Kasawari field — while keeping the temperature below the boiling point. Misplaced passion does not pump oil. Legal mapping does.
Ultimately, political dialogue — supported by rigorous legal data — is the only sustainable path forward. Slogans like “Atin Ito” are powerful tools for internal unity, but they are not instruments of international law.
To protect the Filipino people, the government must adopt Marcoleta’s perspective: define the house with coordinates, not just with heart. That shift moves the nation from vulnerable defiance to defensible sovereignty.
Dialogue is not surrender. It is the strategic choice of a country that values the lives and prosperity of its citizens over the hollow satisfaction of being right in a conflict it cannot, on passion alone, win.